These are instructions on how to make ASDF work with Corman Common Lisp (CCL) 2.5 (or rather vice versa). CCL
has several problems with respect to ANSI
compatibility and thus ASDF can't be used out of the box. As a
consequence, CCL users don't have convenient access to many open
source libraries (check out CLiki or common-lisp.net) out there. They
either have to find another way to load these libraries, or, if
they're new to Lisp, they'll probably end up not using these libraries
at all.

If you're a registered CCL user you should probably ask your vendor to
support the full ANSI standard but until then you can try the
workarounds described here if you want to deploy ASDF. Note that these
workarounds are intended for people who want to load third-party
libraries via ASDF. As we currently have to disable file compilation
it is not recommended to use ASDF in conjunction with CCL for the
development of your own libraries.